The Difference A Day Makes

So two hours after I posted yesterday about Captain America #25, we got our first call. It was, as I’d hoped, an anxious and fumbling thing, not unlike a teenage virgin navigating through coitus for the first time.

“Do you… Captain America, do you have it? Captain America #25? You have it? Do you have enough… I mean, how many do you have? That many? Can I hold… can you put two copies on hold for me? No? Oh, uh, okay, I’ll come down… 11am tomorrow? I’ll come at 11am tomorrow. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.” *click*

Sort of cute in it’s way, you know? Nice.

What was ugly was this morning, when an older fellow actually used the line “I’m disabled, I need to buy two copies!” after we’d lowered the limit to one per person, to make sure that as many people as wanted a copy could get one. He actually begged to buy a second copy, no shame at all, begging. It was sad. And, as I said, ugly. Uglier still when after he left, one copy purchased, 5 minutes later a teenager came in and said “Do you have Captain America #25? Some old guy wants me to buy one for him.”

So, yeah. Probably 50 phone calls today after aÂ story in the newspaper mentioned that we still had copies in stock and generally the tone has remained Civil, but everyone in the city is, apparently, out. Except us. Still. Yes, we still have copies of Captain America #25 for cover price.

I really have no interest in becoming even more unpopular with my fellow retailers, but I am happy that we ordered correctly on this. I’m happy that our rather larger backorder is, apparently, going to ‘fill’ and so there will be more first printings in the market soon, making anyone paying for a $25 copy of this on e-bay feel like a dork. I hope.

Anyway, yeah. We’ll have copies through the end of the day probably, and all of our regular customers have been taken care of and we got some press out of it. All in all, I’m very happy with how we handled this, even as the internet is set ablaze and I am chastised for my lack of being retarded because it isn’t “Captain Canada” who “passed away”.

15 copies left at cover price…

– Christopher
P.S.: Beware any comic store retailer that has copies of this next week and is selling them for a premium. While comics retailers have no obligation at all to sell a book at cover price a week after it came out AND knowing that there is an ample supply of them, you also have no obligation at all to do any business with them whatsoever.